Can You Still Afford to Be a Player?

It's not just companies that are getting downsizeddating is taking a hit too.

For Jason (not his real name), a 32-year-old investment banker at
Merrill Lynch, the market crash had far-reaching consequencesnot
only for his finances but for a more definitive aspect of the banker
lifestyle: women. Jason had grown accustomed to a stately existence that
included frequent-flyer status at big-name Manhattan bottle-service
clubs where he and his peers blew their bonuses on trust-fund girls and
Estonian models. But then the Dow went into free fall and Jason's
bottle-service Saturdays transmogrified into the unthinkable: He was
forced to skim ads for happy-hour specials. As for the Estonian
modelsthat line about working in finance no longer conjured up
images of vast reserves of cash. And Jason wasn't the only one. A friend
of his, a vice president at another bank with an $800,000 salary and an
apartment in New York's top-dollar Tribeca enclave, felt the sting
too.

"He's divorced," Jason says. "His whole job was to pick up chicks.
Now he's worried about his bonus."

Just as the subprime crisis presaged the financial crisis, the
financial crisis is ringing in a sort of carnal recession. That age-old
coupling of high earner and head-turner is in peril. What lawyer Edward
W. Hayes likes to call the High-End Girlfriend Indexa
not-so-scientific assessment of how well moneyed shlubs are getting on
with the bleached-blond droves of yacht-seeking missilesis taking
a nosedive. According to a recent survey by Prince & Associates, a
wealth-research firm, more than 80 percent of multimillionaires who have
extramarital lovers planned to cut back on their gifts and allowances.
Even online hookup sites such as Millionairematch.com, which bills
itself as the "#1 dating site for successful singles and admirers," are
taking a hit. And so, with discretionary dollars in decline, Wall
Street's "bottles and models" battle cry is finally losing some
volume.

Things were already looking bad in September, says Ben, a 24-year-old
investment bankerwho's too wigged out about the crisis to use his
real namefor anyone who'd grown accustomed to falling back on the
appeal of his income bracket to pick up girls.

"I went out this past weekend and met a couple girls who asked me
what I did, and when I said 'Finance,' they were like, 'Oh. You guys
aren't doing so hot lately, are you?'" he says. "They joked about how we
were going to be poor one day, and five minutes later they were gone.
Look, it's no secret that we finance guys aren't the most exciting
people in the world. We're a bunch of guys set on the moneythat's
our whole appeal. So if we can't use that from the startit's not
so much keeping girlfriends, it's going to be getting them."